


Bottles and Knives

by Pholo



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bread, Drunkenness, M/M, SHEITH - Freeform, Shiro is Tired, flower: dandelion, hanakotoba zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 06:11:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15527853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pholo/pseuds/Pholo
Summary: An AU where Keith and Shiro meet when a drunken Keith climbs through Shiro's Garrison dorm room window.This fic was illustrated byGentlemandeerlordandDogskun!!





	Bottles and Knives

**Author's Note:**

> It was such an amazing honor to work with all these talented artists and writers...GOOD LORD. Thank you guys for everything—and thank you to everyone who bought a copy of Hana!!

There was a “click” as Shiro toed his dorm room door closed behind him; he bent to preen apart his shoelaces, fingers sluggish for lack of coffee.

Shiro sighed. He aligned his shoes at the edge of the doorway and padded towards his desk. His gaze snagged on something reflective, and he stopped just short of his chair. His fingers stilled in his hair.

A wine bottle sat on Shiro's desk. The ceiling light bounced off the glass, casting little crescent shapes across his desk. It was half-empty, the remaining wine a sunshine-yellow.

Shiro moved to pick up the bottle. He turned it over in his hands.

 _Louise Cortambert's Dandelion Wine_. Shiro traced the line of the label. No one but the faculty had keys to his dorm room. Had he left the door unlocked? Who would drop by and leave an opened bottle of wine?

Shiro looked around, scared suddenly that he’d been robbed. He sought out his bookcase, still full; his family photos, unmoved on their shelf above his futon; and finally—

There was a lump on his bed. A large, human-shaped lump.

Shiro leapt back. His back smacked the desk, and the wine nearly slipped from his fingers. “What the _fuck?_ ”

A head shot up from Shiro's pillow. A cadet—he looked young; about freshman age—struck his hand under Shiro's pillow. “Wha—who?” His fingers wrenched around. “Where's my knife?”

One hand braced on his desk, the other tight around the neck of the bottle, Shiro balked. “Your—knife?”

“M'knife!” the cadet slurred. Shiro observed the bloom of color across his face. “Where'd you put it? Who—what’re you doing in my room?”

“ _Your_ room?” Shiro said. He had the wits to place the bottle back on his desk. “Christ, you're drunk. You nearly gave me a heart attack. How'd you even get in here?”

“The window,” the cadet said.

Shiro blinked. “We're on the fourth floor.”

“The sills.”

“You—”

“The sills stick out. And there's a pipe—thingy.”

“Yeah, okay, fine. Sure.” Shiro ran a hand along his buzzcut. “We'll talk about this tomorrow with the commander, once you're sober. Right now, you need to get out of my bed.”

The cadet bristled. He hunkered down against the mattress. “Your bed?”

“Yes, _my_ bed. This is _my dorm room_.” Shiro stalked over to his shelf of photos. He plucked one from the ensemble, turned, and held out it out for the cadet to see. “Look. You keep photos of my parents in your room?”

It was an old photo, taken a few years after the Garrison opened. Shiro had found it ages ago at the back of his parents’ closet. In the picture, his parents are freshly graduated, Shiro’s mom caught on a laugh as she throws an arm around her husband’s shoulders. An elaborate cloudscape billows behind them, bright against the shadow of the dunes.

The cadet narrowed his eyes at the picture, attentive like a microbiologist with a delicate specimen. At last he seemed to grasp his mistake. He bit his lip, and craned his neck to look over Shiro’s shoulder. He studied the nuances of Shiro’s wall.

“Hold on,” the cadet said at last. He raised a finger, and Shiro waited, grasp tight around his parents’ photo.

The cadet opened his mouth. Then he collapsed against Shiro’s pillow with a _fwump_. He seemed to have fallen asleep on an exhale.

Shiro was done.

“All right,” he said, replacing the photo. He crossed to the bed. “Let’s get you back to your room.”

The moment Shiro’s hand met the cadet’s shoulder, he was up like a firecracker.

It was like he’d never been asleep. In a flurry he soared off the bed, arms raised. Shiro stumbled back. He dodged a palm to the face; a kick to the knee.

The cadet’s movements were oddly coordinated for a drunk freshman. The two danced back and forth across Shiro’s room. A book on computer science toppled to the floor. The bottle wobbled on the desk as the cadet collided with Shiro’s chair. It steadied at the last second, right as Shiro kicked the cadet’s feet out from under him.

The cadet toppled to the ground. Shiro lunged. The two rolled once—twice. At last Shiro slammed the boy’s shoulders to the floor.

“Do you yield?” Shiro barked.

The cadet stared up at Shiro from his place on the carpet. The fight seemed to leave his limbs as he examined Shiro’s face.

The cadet wrinkled his nose.

“Sorry. Thought you were gonna’...” He turned his head to stare at the space under Shiro’s bed. “Sorry.”

Shiro paused for a moment.

 

[Dogskun on [Tumblr](http://dogskun.tumblr.com/post/176539170365/my-piece-for-hanakotoba-zine-so-glad-to-see-this) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/dogskun/status/1024849522214625280)]

 

Then he let his shoulders droop. He groaned.

“This is gonna’ be one wild report…”

“Don’t care,” the cadet said. “Just let ‘em expel me already.”

Shiro paused. The cadet’s head was still turned away, his hair mussed over his forehead.

He seemed barely winded from the fight.

“Where did you get that wine?” Shiro asked at last, because it was easier than ‘What did you think I was going to do to you?’ or ‘Where did you learn to fight like that?’

The cadet waggled his hands. “Mont’s party.”

“What?”

“Montgomery’s party,” the cadet clarified, loudly. “Can you get off me?”

“I don’t know. Are you gonna’ attack me again?”

“No.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah.”

Shiro was tempted to do the right thing: bundle the cadet off the floor with his hands behind his back and march him down to the faculty offices.

And yet…

“You come at me again, and I’m knocking you out cold.” Shiro rolled off Keith, onto his back, so that they two of them were sprawled out side by side on the floor. “Why were you at Montgomery’s party?”

“It was for…’promising pilots.’”

So this kid was a good student, when he wasn’t drunk off his ass. Shiro stared up at the ceiling, counting the pockmarks in the paint. He remembered that same party from freshman year.

“Don’t think they’re supposed to have alcohol at those parties…” he mused.

“Stole it from the cabinet.”

Shiro snorted. “What? Why?”

“Because…” the cadet focused for a moment, fighting to keep track of a thought. It reminded Shiro of a child chasing fireflies. “Nobody gets it.”

“Gets what?”

“What it’s like,” the cadet said. “To start at rock bottom. No parents; lint savings; shitty public school education.” He clicked his tongue. “Probably got here on recommendation. Do you know...how many strings I had to pull to even submit my application? And they have...the gall. To complain about their parents and their stupid…”

The cadet made a strangled gesture.

“Shit.”

Shiro made an agreeable noise. “Shit.”

“Montgomery was like, ‘Oh Keith, you should totally go to this party.’” The cadet—Keith; where had Shiro heard that name before?—mimed the mouth-motions with his hand. “‘It’ll be great. You’ll make all sorts of new friends.’ Well, maybe I don’t want to be any of their stupid friends, _Lauren_. Tried for like, twenty minutes. Fucked up. Decided to get drunk. Found the kitchen and—” he clapped his hands together. “Boom! Wine!”

“A way to get drunk, sure.”

Keith went on: “Sat on the sand. Rode back to the dorms. Couldn’t let the guards see me, so—climbed up to my room.”

“ _My_ room.”

“Whatever,” Keith said. “ _A_ room. And then you bust in like, ‘What the fuck.’ And I was like, ‘Where’s my knife,’ and you were like, ‘Here’s a picture of my family.’”

“Pretty sure I was there for that part.”

“And then we fought, and now I’m on the floor covered in bruises.” Keith drummed his fingers on the floor. Shiro turned his head at the noise. He took in Keith’s ruffled coat; his dusty pants. Shiro got the sense he didn’t own anything fancier.

“You really worked hard to come here, didn’t you?” Shiro murmured.

Keith didn’t reply for a while. Then he said, “Yeah.”

 

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“You sounded like you wouldn’t mind being suspended.”

“I worked hard getting here.” Keith plucked a piece of lint off the carpet. “Never said I made the right decision.”

“Well…” Shiro said. “If it helps, I was in a similar place when I started out. And I’m glad I stuck around.”

Keith raised an eyebrow, so Shiro went on: “My parents died when I was eleven. They didn’t leave a lot of money behind, but they knew some Garrison officials…”

Shiro’s gaze wandered back to the desk; to the dandelion wine. He scratched his forehead.

“It gets better. Is the point. They dish out better scholarships once you’ve proven yourself—and you learn to tune out the gossip.”

Silence. Shiro could feel Keith’s eyes on him. He lay there, his arms draped over his stomach, and let Keith stare. Finally he rolled onto one side and rose from the carpet. “You probably won’t even remember that tomorrow—”

“Who are you?”

Shiro stuttered to a halt, half propped up against his dorm bed. It’d been awhile since someone asked him that. “My friends call me Shiro. I’m a fighter pilot.”

Keith pursed his lips. He regarded Shiro for a while; then he let his head fall back against the floor.

He screwed his eyes shut.

“Shit.”

Shiro sighed. “You gonna’ throw up?”

“No.”

“Not sure I believe you.”

Keith rolled onto his side, bunching his fingers around the fibers of Shiro’s carpet. “I’m drunk…”

“I know,” Shiro huffed. “Hang tight; I’ve got some wheat bread in the kitchen.” He padded across the room. “You’ll wanna’ stay hydrated, too.”

Keith groaned. Shiro’s fingers found the lightswitch to his tiny dorm kitchen; there was a click, and the sudden brightness made him hiss. “Jeez…” Shiro rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then plucked a bread loaf from the top of the fridge. “I’m not gonna’ write you up, you know.”

A confused grumble from the floor. “What?”

“I said I’m not gonna’ write you up.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” Shiro said. He placed a piece of toast on a paper towel, then opened the cabinet for a water glass. “Guess I sympathize with you.”

“I don’t want your pity.”

“Sympathy and pity aren’t the same thing.” Cold water stung Shiro’s hands as he filled the glass. “I’ve memorized the patrol times and routes, but with you like this I don’t think we can avoid them. You can crash here tonight, and we’ll sneak you out tomorrow morning before roll call. That’s our best bet.”

“People are gonna’ think I slept with you.”

Shiro choked on his own spit. Keith elaborated as he coughed: “I wouldn’t mind.”

“I said _sneak_ ,” Shiro said firmly, once he’d caught his breath. “No one’s going to see.” He brought the toast and water glass out of the kitchen, using his shoulder to fumble off the switch. “Now eat some bread, drink some water, and go to sleep. You can take the bed after all; I still need to finish up some work, and then I can use the futon.”

Shiro stooped to hand Keith the slice of bread. Keith accepted it with reluctance.

“I broke into your room,” he said, as Shiro set down the water glass. “I attacked you.”

“Uh-huh.”

Keith stared at Shiro for a long time. Finally he picked a hair out of his face. He nibbled at the edge of the bread slice.

“Thank you,” he grumbled.

“You’re welcome.” Shiro stepped over to the desk. He grabbed the wine bottle a second time.

He tilted the label at Keith, who shrugged at him as he ate.

“It’s good,” he offered, around a mouthful of bread.

Shiro tapped his finger along the neck of the bottle. He dared to take a sip. He’d never drank wine straight from the bottle before. The liquid hit his tongue, and he swallowed around a smile.

“Christ,” he said, as he lowered the bottle. “Montgomery has good taste…”  

 

Shiro didn’t last another hour. He passed out at his desk, with his head pillowed on his arms—and woke at 0800 to an empty room and a blanket over his shoulders.

He could still smell dandelion wine.

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at mighty-trash.tumblr.com!


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